Kirk Honeycutt

An eloquently shot and closely observed documentary about a poor family in modern-day Indonesia.

The film, well made in every way, smartly focuses on an unlikely friendship between Gretel and the athlete who ultimately replaced her -- a high jumper who was later revealed to be a man!

The movie does achieve something nearly impossible: Someone who doesn't even like the sport may care about Billy Beane and the 2002 Oakland Athletics.

As a thriller, The Debt performs many if not all the right moves. Where the John Madden-directed film gets into trouble is in wanting to deal with the Holocaust without being entirely a period film.

This Mexican action flick from director-writer Beto Gómez has all the makings of a great comedy only no one told the filmmakers.

It's a long movie that feels short: It grabs you in early scenes, intense though low-key before all hell breaks loose, then keeps you riveted to its mostly male characters.

In a sense, this is not a financial thriller so much as a financial mystery. Which gets a bit lost in the movie's stylized presentation.

The film is a deft, graceful and often poignant story of a woman's quest to find her own identity and a spiritual sanctuary that will give her life hope and meaning.

Danish director Lone Scherfig skillfully adapts David Nicholls' best-selling romantic novel to the screen.

There is no purpose to the film other than random blood splattering amid scenes of bondage, primitive savagery and S&M eroticism. The film is numbing and dumb with its hero indistinguishable from its villains.

The result is a scary movie that is genuinely scary in parts, although an adult can't help noticing this is set in the very worn and tattered territory of the haunted-house genre. Then when you get a glimpse of the CGI critters causing all the mayhem, the scares completely vanish.

To borrow from TV terminology, the series hasn't jumped the shark yet, but the strain of inventing bizarre deaths is beginning to show.

Taylor does capture the Jim Crow era and its anxieties well, but his characters tend toward the facile and his white heroine is too idealized.

Fleischer stages one chase scene with a bit of comic flair but otherwise never locates that mix of macabre action and comedy that at least made "Zombieland" amusing.

The Change-Up bravely attempts to revive the dormant subgenre but it's a lame effort that grows increasingly frantic and foul-mouthed as the realization sets in that the gimmick isn't working.

Green has chosen for his focus to fall on Enrique, in many ways the least interesting character in his story, rather than the son or even the mother who is surprisingly protective and understanding.

The film never quite pins the chef down about any of this but in his menu introduction to the staff or off-hand remarks to long-time colleagues you begin to understand the mindset. "The more bewilderment, the better," he declares. He is not joking.

A high-wire act that almost slips as it edges perilously closer and closer to the edge of improbability. But it never does.

Good Neighbors is a film of acquired taste. If one is willing to accept humor in a movie about a serial killer, if one likes a thriller than emphasizes character over thrills, if one is susceptible to a cast of characters that includes three cats, then the movie has found its very selective target audience.

Life in a Day is an experimental project driven by the Internet at its best, where connectivity among the planet's population has become a reality.

The key to its success lies in the determination by everyone involved to play the damn thing straight. Even the slightest goofiness, the tiniest touch of camp, and the whole thing would blow sky high. But it doesn't.

The movie suffers perhaps from too many characters and subplots but all the actors appear to have fun with their characters.

Sticking to its simplistic, patriotic origins, where a muscular red, white and blue GI slugging Adolf Hitler in the jaw is all that's required, Captain America trafficks in red-blooded heroes, dastardly villains, classy dames and war-weary military officers.

The movie gathers momentum with a steady, assured pace, accumulating incidents, characters, secrets and lies until the rush of events is absolutely transfixing. Cinema can sometimes rival the novel in compulsive intensity and Sarah's Key is one such example.

Nothing is bleaker than failed black comedy, which this is.

So strong are the emotions - and, yes, the melodrama - that Snow Flower and the Secret Fan represents one of Wang's best films to date.

The lameness of the gags and dialogue and the film's frequent deep dives for the bottom at the expense of real comedy speak to desperation in Hollywood to figure out the audience for contemporary naughty comedy.

Charlie Hunnam and Terrence Howard put enough actors' oomph into these ledge mates to make them authentic characters even though the film fails to achieve anything like the same level of authenticity.